ABSTRACT
Practiced in public communities and private spaces throughout the world, consensual sadomasochism (SM) provides an interesting puzzle for dramaturgical sociology. Like many erotic performances, it is understood as being somehow outside of the mundane, perhaps even anti-mundane. SM is viewed as a means of stripping away the very trappings of everyday life that Goffman held as both the accumulation and explanation of the self (1959). It is often understood as accessing some rawer, purer “self,” some aspect of personhood that most people hold sacred. A dramaturgical perspective on SM not only reveals the staging of the sadomasochistic self as such, but also challenges the ever-present paradigm of the erotic as somehow more authentic than other aspects of everyday life. This chapter, based on fieldwork among consensual SM participants (2002–2006 and 2010–2012), explores the presentations of sadomasochistic selves during the moment-to-moment actions during SM interaction (“scenes”).
